The discovery last week of what appeared to be a piece of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 on the shores of Réunion Island seemed at first blush a giant leap toward solving the famously perplexing mystery. Officials declared that, based on photos, the part could only have come from a Boeing 777. And since only one 777 has ever been lost at sea, physical evidence of the vanished plane seemed at last to be irrefutably in hand.
This marked a huge break in the case, since before now not a single piece of wreckage had ever been spotted. The only evidence that the plane had gone into the ocean was a series of difficult-to-decipher signals received by the satellite company Inmarsat. The incongruity led some, including me, to question whether the plane had really wound up in the Indian Ocean at all. Back in February, I explained in New York how sophisticated hijackers might have infiltrated the plane’s electronic bay in order to spoof the satellite signals and take the plane north to Kazakhstan. MH370 wreckage on the shores of Réunion makes such explanations unnecessary.
Investigators hope to glean from the six-foot-long chunk important clues about where and how the plane went down. The piece, called a flaperon, forms part of the trailing edge of the wing, and was located just behind the right engine. The front part of it looks dinged up but more or less intact, but pieces on the side and much of the rear part have been ripped away. That damage might have taken place in the ocean, but if on inspection it appears to have been caused by high-speed airflow (as a plane might experience in a steep dive) or impact with the water, it could shed light on the flight’s final moments.
The fact that the debris was found on Réunion itself provides a hint as to where the plane went down. The island lies on the far side of the Indian Ocean from the suspected crash area, a distance of some 2,500 miles. The ocean’s strongest east-to-west current, the South Equatorial Current, runs about a thousand miles north of where searchers are currently looking. Should the search area be moved up? In the coming weeks oceanographers will be refining their models in order to figure that out. To lend a hand, biologists will examine the barnacles and other sea life found living on the debris in order to determine how long it was in the water and what part of the ocean it passed through.
But, as if steeped in the weirdness of all things MH370, the Réunion flaperon came wrapped in an unexpected layer of ambiguity.
All airline parts carry identifying labels, much as cars carry Vehicle Identification Numbers etched on the engine block. In the normal course of things, this plate should have been attached to the rib end of the flaperon and allowed investigators to make an instantaneous identification. As fate would have it, the plate is missing.
It’s going to be a tricky job, and the stakes are high: MH370 has unnerved the aviation community like no crash before. Until we can figure out what took it down, the danger is ever-present that it could happen again.
While the world’s attention is on the flaperon, however, the sonar-scanning of the seabed on the other side of the Indian Ocean promises to tell us even more about MH370’s fate. If the small flotilla of search ships can locate the plane’s primary debris field on the ocean floor, they’ll likely find the black boxes that can tell us exactly what happened to the flight. But even if they don’t, they’ll reveal something important about what happened.
The area they’re scouring was defined through analysis of the Inmarsat satellite data. Part of the data tells investigators that the plane must have wound up somewhere along a broad arc 3,000 miles in radius. Another part, subjected to a new and complex form of analysis, showed that the plane headed in a generally southern direction. Where, exactly, depends on how it flew. If the plane flew slowly it would have taken a curving path and wound up north of a subsea feature called Broken Ridge. If it flew fast, its path would have been straighter and taken it south of Broken Ridge.
Among the attractions of the latter option was that it fit with an easy-to-imagine scenario: that, after flying up the Malacca Strait, whoever had been in control became incapacitated and the plane flew straight south on autopilot as a “ghost ship” until it ran out of fuel. Once that happened, the plane would have quickly spiraled into the ocean within a few miles of the final arc, meaning that the debris would have to be located within a fairly small area of seabed.
Last October, after months of internal debate, Australian officials decided that the straight-and-fast scenario was more likely. They laid out a 60,000-square-kilometer search grid and hired contractors to begin scanning. Their confidence in their analysis was so great that they reportedly kept a bottle of Champagne in the fridge, ready to be popped at any time. The longer they searched without finding the plane, officials said, the more their confidence grew, because they knew the plane had to be inside that box.
As time went by, however, a problem emerged: The plane wasn’t there. After six months, there was a 99 percent probability that the search had covered the calculated end point, and that number only kept climbing toward 100. Authorities stopped talking about how sure they were that it was in the 60,000-square-kilometer area, and announced that they would expand the search zone to twice that size.
What went unremarked upon in the general press was that there was no theoretical justification for the authorities to continue the search in this way. To get so far from the final arc, the plane would have to have been actively piloted, because only a conscious pilot could have kept the plane out of a death spiral. So the ghost-ship scenario was out the window. A plane held in a glide by a conscious pilot could travel for a hundred miles or more, far too huge an area of ocean to scan. The only reason to search the extra 60,000 square miles was that, for the authorities, it was better than admitting they had no idea what they were doing.
It also kept them from having to contemplate other unattractive alternative scenarios. Perhaps the plane didn’t fly straight and fast, but slow and curvy, and wound up north of Broken Ridge. It’s hard to imagine why someone would fly like this, but then again it’s hard to imagine why someone would sit patiently on a six-hour death flight to nowhere. If a slow, curvy flight was what happened, then again a terminal death spiral could by no means be assumed, and the required search area would be impossibly large.
To be sure, none of these scenarios make a lot of sense. But then, so much of what we know about MH370 is baffling. If the perps flew into the southern Indian Ocean because they wanted to disappear, why didn’t they just fly to the east instead of turning back over the Malay peninsula? If the aim was suicide, why not just put the nose down and crash right away, like every other suicide pilot we know of? And why did the perps turn off the satellite communication, and then turn it back on again, a procedure that — by the way — few airline pilots know how to do?
Though it has earned much less attention from the world press, the failure of the seabed search actually tells us a lot about what did or did not happen to MH370. And what it tells us is that this case is as weird as ever.
This piece originally ran on the New York magazine website on August 4, 2015.
@Susie
My answer is – the pilot is the responsible party in all three cases.
QZ-8501: Pilot knowingly flew into an area of severe weather
MH17: Pilot knowingly flew into a conflict zone.
MH370: Pilot diverted the aircraft.
You can add some others to your list as well.
9525: Pilot flew into the side of a mountain.
214 (SFO): Pilot came up short of the runway.
235 (Taiwan): Pilots react incorrectly, and dump plane in river.
When something goes wrong with a commercial flight, the first place to look for an explanation is the flight deck. My guess is that this is probably not the answer you were looking for.
@DennisW
Quote
MH370: Pilot diverted the aircraft.
End of quote
Question: What reason would the pilot have for diverting the plane?
Thank you.
@Joe
political shenanigans
@StevanG
Quote
Political shenanigans
End of quote
Is this what you think or what you know?
If this is what you know please provide proof.
Thank you.
What reason would there be for a hijacking (your suggestion)? Why do we need reasons, and you don’t need reasons?
I will answer your question anyway. It is a default scenario supported by Shah’s postings on social media, his strong political interest, and the fact that he attended the trial (on a baseless charge of sodomy) of someone he had a high political regard for the morning of the flight.
There is simply no other explanation that can withstand even the slightest scrutiny.
@DennisW
So the pilot killed over 200 people because he was upset?! We have no suicide note. You would think that if he was so upset he would have left a note telling the world why he committed such an act.
Maybe the pilot just forgot to leave a note!
Thank you.
@Joe
it doesn’t mean he wanted to kill them, there is a high probability he wanted to go to Christmas Island (why else would he turn SE after getting around Indonesia?) but failed to do so because of the conflict with copilot/other people on the plane
it is a stretch but unless someone comes up with something more plausible I’ll stick to that theory
@Joe
Joe you are a little late to this party. No problem, I have the same issue myself with certain nuances that I have not been following closely, and I often ask questions that have been beaten to death more than once.
It was not a planned suicide. You might know the Christmas Island is a known haven for Chinese refugees. The political statement scenario speculates that Shah intended to land on the island to embarrass the Malay government, and give the PAX (most of whom were Chinese) the opportunity to seek asylum. Something went wrong on the approach, most likely fatigue and loss of fuel situational awareness, and the aircraft ran out of fuel after passing South of the island to verify a clear runway (control tower not manned at that time).
BTW, suicide note statistics show that only 25% -30% of suicides are accompanied by a note. No matter, Shah showed no symptoms of being suicidal. Quite the opposite, in fact.
What do we know (not think) about what happened to MH370?
A plane took a very strange trip to the southern India Ocean.
Everything else is pure conjecture!
@StevanG
@DennisW
Christmas Island? Pure conjecture.
And yes I knew about Christmas Island. I was thinking that the ‘Christmas Island’ scenario is something we would hear on the Coast-to-Coast radio show.
Our very own Jeff Wise has written about the ‘Christmas Island’ scenario or theory. In short, Mr. Wise says that the ‘Christmas Island’ scenario or theory does not fit the facts.
Joe: the Maldives eyewitness accounts, Curtin Boom, Réunion flaperon and (potential) Maldives shoreline debris at least arguably cross-corroborate. The Inmarsat signal data – the only thing pointing us to anywhere near the current search zone (csz) – is corroborated by precisely nothing.
The IG study connecting the csz to the flaperon ASSUMED the csz was correct as an AXIOM. Independent surface drift analyses suggested [Réunion but NOT Western Australia] is absurd. And any drift claim that passes through the ATSB’s hands is not trustworthy.
Search leaders are hiding something. Anything else is conjecture.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3191134/Has-MH370-debris-washed-Maldives-Investigators-examine-items-isles-locals-saw-low-flying-jet-day-plane-vanished.html
@Bruce Lamon – Are you saying that of all the the crashes into the sea that you have researched, this flaperon is the first piece of debris from any of those planes to be recovered on shore?
For example, you believe no debris from AF447 was reported to have been found on a beach anywhere? If true, it would show others why no debris is necessary to support a MH370 crash into a sea.
BTW, if Zaharie flew by Christmas Island he could have continued on a little more than an hour to Denpasar, which was his most recent RT destination prior to March 07/08.
@Joe
“Our very own Jeff Wise has written about the ‘Christmas Island’ scenario or theory. In short, Mr. Wise says that the ‘Christmas Island’ scenario or theory does not fit the facts.”
Don’t get me started.
@Joe
“What do we know (not think) about what happened to MH370?
A plane took a very strange trip to the southern India Ocean.”
We do know it took southeast turn after getting around Indonesia, any theory should take that into account and offer plausible motivation for such a move.
“Our very own Jeff Wise has written about the ‘Christmas Island’ scenario or theory. In short, Mr. Wise says that the ‘Christmas Island’ scenario or theory does not fit the facts.”
What facts it does not fit? Flaperon is a lot more likely to have come from vicinity of Christmas Island than the current search zone, and that’s all the hard evidence we have.
@Brock McEwen
A goodly number of very smart people who were directly connected with the investigation and a number of third party people who are also very smart have looked at the data and have concluded that the plane went into ocean off the western coast of Australia. The current search area is their best educated guess where the plane hit the water based on the data and the calculations.
Quote
Search leaders are hiding something.
End of quote.
Three questions:
1) What are the leaders hiding?
2) Why are they hiding?
3) Brock McEwen, do you listen to the Coast-to-Coast radio show?
@Matty-Perth
If the debris turns out to be from MH370 that would be very interesting. The Maldives look like they are on the current’s path.
Did the natives see MH370? People see UFOs all the time. It does not mean they are real.
@StevanG
It is true that no good deed goes unpunished. Responding to Joe initially was my mistake. I would suggest that he familiarize himself with the BFO/BTO analytics, but my wild guess is that they would be insurmountable for him.
Yes, the CI scenario continues to strengthen while the others continue to wither. When and if the French conclude that the flaperon damage was the result of a controlled ditch, the floodgates will open against the zombie hypothesis. tick, tick, tick,…
According to one source intimate with the latest intelligence, those networks stretch from Malaysia through to Taiwan, Macau, Hong Kong and the Gulf Arab monarchies.
It appears, says the source, that al-Fataa mosque is a “node” in these networks.
Then there are the growing numbers of Indonesians self-radicalising, wooed by IS propaganda on websites and social media.
Among them have been students as young as 16, food hawkers and, reportedly, pilots. Inspired by online jihadist publicity, a brigadier in Indonesia’s national police, Syahputra, travelled to Syria in March. He reportedly died in combat, and was hailed as a martyr by Indonesian militants.
Read more: http://www.watoday.com.au/world/allard-is-contagion-growing-in-indon–seo-20150804-gir4vk.html#ixzz3iMSTnaLP
Follow us: @watoday on Twitter | WAtoday on Facebook
@StevanG
Quote
“Our very own Jeff Wise has written about the ‘Christmas Island’ scenario or theory. In short, Mr. Wise says that the ‘Christmas Island’ scenario or theory does not fit the facts.”
What facts it does not fit? Flaperon is a lot more likely to have come from vicinity of Christmas Island than the current search zone, and that’s all the hard evidence we have.
End of quote
Let me quote Mr. Wise:
For instance, some individuals believe that MH370 went to Christmas Island, an Australian possession south of Java. In order for it to have arrived there, both the BTO and BFO data sets must be wrong. One can imagine that this might be possible, but it would be an extraordinary technical undertaking. Suffice to say, no one has come up with an explanation of how such a thing could be accomplished. And if it were accomplished, then the plane could be basically anywhere within 6 hours’ flying distance of MH370’s last known position, so why should we choose Christmas Island out of all the other possible destinations? Certainly it is possible that the plane landed on Christmas Island, but assertions to that effect are not built on any known information. They are data-less theories. Dugain’s tale, likewise, is completely detached from known data.
End of quote
@ Susie Crowe,
The obvious answer is that in all 3 of these crashes, the airline in question is owned by Malaysia.
@Joe
Jeff got it wrong there, the plane could go to CI with BFO&BTO perfectly matching
it just wouldn’t be a perfect straight path (which would be nothing unusual in this kind of situation)
@DennisW
Dear DennisW;
I can assume that you have looked at the BFO/BTO analytics and your conclusion is contrary to the conclusion of a lot of smart people.
DennisW, have you offered your services do the smart people? They would be very sad if you did not. The world needs to know the truth!
The only thing that would insurmountable for me would be to fit Christmas Island with the known facts. Note: Please see the above quote from Mr. Wise.
Thank you.
they have stated numerous times it’s just their assumption the plane flew straightforward to the south
an assumption is not the fact, it’s just an assumption that is now obviously wrong
Christmas Island (a landing or a near landing) is no more real than Santa Claus.
Good night for now. I need to listen to Gary Sullivan.
@Joe: I haven’t a clue what is being hidden, nor why. I’m glad you share my curiosity; in upcoming public demands for full public disclosure of all internal analyses, I’ll look forward to your co-signature.
I’ll not respond to your third question (the cheap and small-minded insult with a question mark stapled on at the end), but I do forgive you for it: I chose to match your own style and tone in my first response, so I can understand why your blood would have been boiling.
@ Matty
Thank you Matty for the Maldives link it seems MH 370 may be beginning to show itself
@ everyone
Probably the most twilight zone theory of all is Shah being suicidal after attending Ibrahim’s trial where the verdict was already a foregone conclusion and an appeal was still on the table. He then proceeds to enact his suicide by killing 238 people (not possible for they survived past initial stage or there would have been signs), played connect the flying plane dots while flying with a plane full of dead people for hours while he flew out to the wide open sea and then, either vertically nose- dived or did a Hudson River glide as he crashed into the ocean to end his life
Joe T – Vabbibfaru Island on one map at least(Maldives are a nightmare) seems to be north of the equator. Oceanographers(some of them) have stated that debris will not cross the equator so I’m interested to see what it is.
Yes, a lot of smart people have looked at this issue, and I have great respect for all of them.
There is nothing wrong with being wrong. As Teddy said, “the credit belongs to the man in the arena”.
@Brock McEwen
The Maldives sighting, once and for all, is not possible because MH370 ran out of fuel one full hour before the sun came up there.
Sunrise on 08 Mar in Maldives was 06:15 lcl / 01:15UTC. MH370 ran out of fuel, according to the IG, at 00:15UTC.
As to some unheard of journals posting stories about debris washing up there now, I have no opinion.
But it simply is not possible for anyone to have seen MH370 during daylight hours in Maldives.
@Joe
I’m afraid your claim is unsubstantiated. Not that you care much obviously.
Matt Moriarty: For a number of reasons I believe that MH370 did not fly to the Maldives…but fuel consumption is not one of those reasons.
The fuel flow rate is a function of speed. I calculated that at FL200 and Holding speed of about 287 KTAS, the plane had sufficient fuel endurance to last until 1:15 UTC and could have reached the Maldives at the Holding speed. Of course, at this speed, the range is reduced compared to typical cruise speeds, but there is still sufficient fuel to traverse the distance to the Maldives.
Here is a summary of the calculation:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zvua6t7cio38ljf/Fuel%20to%20Maldives.jpg?dl=0
(1)Where does a “red-eye” flight generally fall within a pilot’s desired flights (accepting the generality)?
(2) Are pilots with the most seniority, hours (generally) given first crack of schedule selection?
(3) How far in advance (typically) are the schedules assigned?
(4) Are pilots aware in advance of their cargo and do they receive a manifest before take-off?
(5) Is passenger seating sometimes adjusted for cargo weight i.e. under selling seats for heavy cargo?
@ Dennis
If I am beating that dead horse I apologize
@Susie
I welcome your contribution. No need to apologize, but be aware that anything you say will be held against you, particularly if it smacks of conspiracy.
@Susie
How would 100% precise answers to all your questions help anything?
@Susie FWIW, I was on a Southwest flight where all pax were asked to move forward of the wing. Nothing to do with cargo. Anticipating turbulence.
@ StevanG
“100% precise answers” to questions regarding Zahrie Shah’s options, procedures and guidelines as a pilot may offer additional insight which could be construed as “help”
@VictorI
Ok. I buy that. However hackneyed and shoehorned the notion of flying a perfect endurance-only run to…Maldives of all places…and then doing a racetrack overhead at FL200 for almost two hours waiting for sunrise and then descending to run out of fuel precisely five minutes after sunrise over Kookoorooovoodoo… You and I would prob both agree that while it may be possible, it’s so ludicrous as to be ignored.
Plus the Sat rings…
So… For many reasons, let’s please let go of the “Maldives Sighting.” It drives me nuts when I hear about it.
@Susie Crowe
I doubt you will get all the answers you are seeking from any MAS pilot at this stage. It might be of interest to you that there was talk of a pilot swap in the roster for that flight but then it was denied (see malaymail online “MAS official denies pilot swap in MH370 roster”). With the mangosteens I seem to remember they were a late addition to the flight (I could be wrong) and then again there has been doubt about these because they were out of season. If you haven’t already seen the Factual Information
http://mh370.mot.gov.my/ it’s worth a look. See also many good (and highly technical) reports on Duncan Steel’s site. I’m hopeful we will get some real news this week now the French are involved. Stay tuned.
People are not paying attention to the fact that First Officer was on his first flight after getting training, sitting with one of the most experienced Instructor Pilot from the Airline. What if they both had a fight where Zahari Shah told Farooq that you have made this and that mistake and you will be going back to school or be fired from post as soon we return?
Egypt Air flight went into sea because First officer committed Suicide, he was told that it was his last flight, he literally made his last flight. The point is that perhaps Farooq some how got angry and perhaps knocked the Capt. unconscious or perhaps accidentally killed him, then not knowing what to do, turn communications off and flew away from its path in confusion.
The 7 or 8 hour flight could be the reason where he simply wanted to erase the CVR recording of that incident as he knew Black Boxes would only contain last two hours of flight recording and plus going as far as possible to simply disappear so nobody would know what really happened in the cockpit.
Perhaps this was his Idea to save his family from shame which would be upon them if the Aircraft would found immediately, he decided to just get as far as possible so nobody would ever find them.
When we humans are angry we do stupid things and there are countless examples around us, I think its simply a case of “Cockpit-rage” which went horribly wrong and ended up in disaster.
Matt Moriarty – bear in mind, if the Maldive debris looks like 777 then an equatorial crash somewhere is right on the cards. The Malaysian govt are claiming any old debris atm so this will test them. If it turns out to be aviation trash then we will definitely need a positive ID on the Reunion bit.
I’m guessing the Maldives part says “automatIC”.
Wouldn’t a Maldives flight mean ISAT, ATSB, and the IG got the data completely wrong?
@Matt Moriarty:
1) counter-intuitive flight path: it’s not like the SIO flight path is exactly swimming in common sense, is it?
2) “Plus” ISAT data conflict: actually, if you SUBTRACT the need to adhere to the ISAT data, all your other objections go away, because the plane can land, refuel, perhaps add or subtract passengers or cargo, take back off, and perhaps approach a target from a less anticipated direction. It is the ISAT data alone which renders nonsensical the notion that the mass sighting was of MH370 itself.
3) Who says this mystery had to involve only a single plane in the air? I’m on record as highly doubtful the mass eye-witness event was of MH370 itself, but nearly certain it is at least somewhat RELATED to the disappearance. The mind reels at the possibilities – most benign or reactive, some less so.
@susie crowe @brock @matt moriarty
trust in data
As we all know from history, the world was saved on Sept 26th 1983 from mutual nuclear destruction by means of a couple of 10,000 + warheads, due to the one responsible russian colonels Stanislaw Jewgrafowitsch Petrow decision, to mistrust the data, he was given by his computer department.
In that night the world was only seconds from all-out nuclear war, because in the field HQ of the russian satellite surveillance in the Serpuchow 15 Bunker at Moscow, the system interpreted signals as some attacking american nuclear missiles. The IT-department in this bunker rated the probability of a US attack at 100% , while the radar observer could not see missile traces (he thought because of weather phenomena). Petrow had to verify the alarm. The protocol obliged him to mandatory rate the alarm an attack if the computers probability was at 100% . That would have implied that 11,000 russian nuclear warheads would have been started.
Instead of trusting the data, he kept his sound judgement and decided against protocol for a false alarm. In the moment of his decision he said to his subordinates: “I dont trust the computer!”
If he had behaved like a slave of the IT industry , we all here would not discuss anything on the internet, but try to survive in stone age structures, if any.
The lesson is not to mistrust anything coming from computers, but to keep the sound judgement of sane minds over any suggestions from mere data. The ISAT data lead to not only endless, but very weird assumptions of a zombie flight. As long as the ISAT data are not corroborated, sane people would be ill-advised to accept such a scenario.
There is still the as yet not answered question, whether the irregular sat logon 18:23 was accidental or due to tampering with the electronic systems. This question needs to be answered first, BEFORE any other scenarios can be set up.
Only a responsible criminal investigation can answer these questions. We can be very happy that the French will have access to the ISAT data now. They were the ones who built the satellite and AES in question and they sure can make most of the data together with an orderly process following criminal leads, that are over and over the place, but are not even discussed.
BTW the Los Angeles Times sees the noose tightening around the neck of the malaysian PM and his friends. Maybe the malaysian people decide to hang him after all.
@Brock, while I always rejected for many reasons the idea that the Kudahuvadhooans saw mh370 – that the sat data don’t match was the least important of those reasons btw – I agree with the need to consider other reasons why the odd behavior of the sighted plane might’ve been connected with mh370’s vanishing.
I have pointed that out more than once but I repeat: Rand Meyer made personal phone inquiries at Kudahuvadhoo around Christmas last year. The odd plane was apparently not only seen over Kudahuvadhoo but over other islands nearby, too, over a stretch of time.
If true, this would dispel the notion of the plane having been mh370 once and for all because the fuel wouldn’t have lasted long enough for hanging around in that area over a stretch of time. However it would also contradict the “Le Monde” report that it was simply a scheduled flight of the national Maldivian airline – something which was discounted elsewhere also.
That the Maldivian authorities apparently resorted to blatantly lying about the identity of the plane isn’t comforting. Neither is the idea that Maldivian and Malaysian authorities will join forces in order to investigate the debris which apparently surfaced a few months ago.
My personal idea about the Kudahuvadhooan sighting is that it might’ve been sent for a clandestine search for mh370 by some factions. That would match the plane’s appearance shortly after sunrise, flying low and slow and hanging around in the area for a stretch of time – if that really happened. That it was apparently not a military or SAR aircraft doesn’t rule out this possibility of an unofficial search mission . As to the size of the aircraft: Rand Meyer pointed out that the descriptions varied considerably and were all made in comparison to the “flying boats” the Maldivians are used to. Also a noisy and low aircraft might appear huge – especially if one isn’t used to see large airliners in that area.
I could think of many reasons to keep an early unofficial search for mh370 in that area under wraps. Many of them being fairly harmless – but not all of them.
@CA
” The ISAT data lead to not only endless, but very weird assumptions of a zombie flight. ”
it’s not the data but its interpretation that is wrong or better said quite rigid
http://mobile.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/mh370-debris-cant-be-on-reunion-island-and-the-maldives-at-the-same-time-says-expert/story-e6frfq80-1227477749825
@Oleksandr,
I am traveling now and don’t have access to all my files, so I can’t give you the exact image processing steps I used to generate the IR image I showed covering the FMT area. However, I will offer some additional information and comments that may shed light on the “hook” first detected by Kirill Prostyakov. First, the feature is very faint with a contrast smaller than is typical of contrails. Second, the variation with wavelength does not seem to match the expected IR signature of a typical contrail. Third, as pointed out by Simon proud, the high-altitude humidity that night does not seem to be high enough to reliably produce contrails. Fourth, I have not identified other image features as aligning with other known flight routes. In other words, I don’t see any other clear images of contrails elsewhere within the frame. So we are left with multiple arguments that indicate the “hook” is unlikely to be caused by a typical contrail. Yet, the presence of the curved image feature is above the apparent noise level, and the shape of the “hook” is a circular arc with just the right radius to match a typical B777 autopilot turn, and the location of the “hook” is consistent with a potential MH370 flight path. Perhaps the latter is due simply to the fact that we only looked near there, but in my opinion we should not immediately discount the “hook” because it does not fit the typical contrail. Perhaps it was caused by something abnormal, like smoke, exiting the aircraft. We know that contrails are seeded by soot particles and enhanced by water vapor, both of which are emitted in the engine exhaust. I wonder if larger quantities of soot, as in smoke from an onboard fire, might trigger nucleation and the formation of a contrail in atmospheric conditions not otherwise conducive to contrail formation? Or possibly the “hook” is simply the faint attenuation by the smoke of the IR radiation upwelling from the sea below the aircraft. While I concur that the “hook” is not likely to be a typical ice contrail, that does not prove that it is not a real feature produced by 9M-MRO.
so, according to the Daily Mail some pieces of the Maldivian debris have been identified as parts of a capsized barge. No big surprise there. I think the debris hunt fever broke out and there will be many more instances of airplane debris which turns out to be parts of sewing machines, ladders, surfboards and other mundane things unfortunately cluttering our oceans. But I certainly won’t trust any announcements coming from the Malaysians after last week’s disaster.